Coding is the future!

When we think of our students taking a second language in school, we usually go to the defaults like Spanish, French and German. If you are lucky enough to have Japanese and Chinese that is a bonus and if the school is really progressive maybe American Sign Language is also offered. Rarely, if ever, do we see Coding as a language offered in schools.

Take a look at this TEDx video on “Scratch” an new way to code for kids. It’s free and fun!
(from the Scratch website:)

Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

As young people create and share Scratch projects, they learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also learning to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively.

Scratch is developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, with financial support from the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, Intel Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Google, Iomega and MIT Media Lab research consortia.

Below is an example of a SCRATCH made by a student.
(Best viewed in Firefox, IE or Safari Browsers.)

2 Responses

It’s really great that this movement is happening. Even if most of the kids taught these things don’t go on to become programmers, they will learn a foundation in logical and analytical thinking that will help with everything!